2014

National President, BJP

Amit Bhai’s tireless campaign for BJP and his unflinching commitment to party’s programes and ideology got him the coveted post of National President in July, 2014. At 49, Amit Bhai was the youngest National President of BJP. However, age has not been a hindrance in discharging his duties as the National President of the ruling party of India thanks to his past political experience in Gujarat and early age training as Swayam Sevak of the RSS.

It is unfortunate that despite BJP forming the first full majority government in last 30 years, its critiques don’t consider it to be a party with pan-India appeal. Amit Bhai took this as a challenge and launched a national membership drive. As part of this drive, he travelled through the length and breadth of the country, addressed workers, held rallies, made people aware about BJP’s policies and vision, and exhorted them to join the party and strengthen the nation. Given his hard work, enthusiastic support from party’s workers and popularity of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, BJP has today emerged as the largest political party in the world with more than 11 crore members. During first year of his tenure as National President of the BJP, Amit Bhai travelled 160,634 km at an average of 541 km per day. With this gigantic effort Amit Bhai has become first BJP president to travel all states of India in less than one year of his tenure.

Even the status of world’s largest party could not stop Amit Bhai from further taking forward his “Sashakt Bhajapa-Sashakt Bharat” campaign. Immediately after the conclusion of membership drive, he started national level contact program (Maha Sampark Abhiyan), which involved grassroots party workers reaching out to new members through specific programs to rope them into mainstream party activities of the BJP. It is expected that after the completion of Sampark Abhiyan, BJP will have a large army of grassroots workers, which is likely to deliver rich electoral dividends in the future.

The party building activities could not divert Amit Bhai’s attention from 5 assembly elections that took place during the first year of his tenure. BJP performed exceedingly well in these assembly elections where it managed to earn three Chief Ministers and one Deputy Chief Minister. BJP won a majority on its own in Haryana where it had never crossed 10 seats and gave a stable government to Jharkhand which had suffered a lot since its formation,due to fractured coalition governments. He courageously contested Maharashtra assembly election on his own, breaking decade’s long subordination to Shiv Sena and reaching very close to the majority mark. Driven by nationalism and his party’s commitment for Kashmir, Amit Bhai entered into an alliance with the PDP to provide a stable government in Muslim majority state of Jammu & Kashmir, which had thrown a badly fractured mandate in the election. However, he could not give due attention to Delhi assembly election due to his “Sashakt Bhajapa campaign” and 4 assembly elections. As result BJP lost Delhi assembly election badly. But Delhi debacle did not take his focus away from the targets of successfully completing membership drive and in Samapark Abhiyan as well preparation for all-important Bihar assembly elections.